Australia was reliant upon the British Foreign Office for its foreign policy until the Department of External Affairs grew in cabinet importance in the 1940s. Previously the department had not been focused on foreign policy at all. Central to the department's new importance in foreign affairs was the changing circumstance of the Cold War, the decolonisation of former European Empires and the loss of power and prestige of Britain. Another reason, was the vibrant energy of Herbert Vere "Doc" Evatt.

The path to an independent foreign affairs department was not simple, other cabinet heavyweights such as defence, trade, immigration and even the Prime Minister were keen to protect their bureaucratic turf and existing power. There was also the question of competing philosophies on foreign policy - the advent of the United Nations and Soviet aggression was to bring those philosophies into sharp focus.

Doc Evatt

Evatt was born in Maitland, NSW in 1894. Law was to become a focus of his early career, as he graduate first with Bachelors, and then with a Doctorate in law from Sydney University. Soon after he was elected to the NSW Legislative Assembly before being appointed, at age thirty-six, as the youngest justice to serve in the High Court of Australia. He retired from that position to run for the Federal seat of Barton in 1940 and soon found himself as Attorney-General and Minister for External Affairs in the Curtin Government.

Previous to Evatt taking over External Affairs, there was no real department for foreign policy, nor foreign affairs. Australia was the last dominion to let go of Britain as its guiding light in foreign policy, and as a consequence the Prime Minister had a great deal of influence in this area. The Prime Minister appointed the Australian High Commissioner to London, who was responsible to the Prime Minister, and not the Department of External Affairs.

This power structure between the Prime Minister and the "Great and Powerful Friend" was to be disastrous when Curtin acted toward American General Douglas MacArthur in the same way, giving MacArthur constant access to Curtin, and Curtin not involving the Australian military in any of the decisions.

The Cold War

For a new foreign affairs department, the challenges in the aftermath of World War II were large. The traditional Western European powers had been either defeated, or bankrupted. Their power and influence was at an end. The European empires had colonies around the world and many near Australia. The Dutch with Indonesia, the Portuguese with East Timor, the British with Malaya, the French with Vietnam and New Caledonia; the stability of all these colonies was in doubt.

The Department of External Affairs did not doubt that the European powers would retreat from their colonies, but there were several unknowns. Were the colonies capable of self-governance now, would the European powers let them self-govern if they were, and would it take generations until European power was finally spent. There was the additional irony that Australia was firmly wedded to a British Empire, that had retracted heavily during World War II.

Another new power relationship had emerged, and that was the United States and Soviet Russia. The United States was predicated on free markets and the open movement of capital, whereas the Soviet Union was defined by a centrally controlled economy and regulated to the minutest input and output. The Cold War was to become an economic war, but in 1946, there remained the apprehension that it would become another war of aggression which would reach every corner of the globe.

Another dynamic which came to the fore after World War II was the theme of global governance, which after the San Francisco conference, was to become the United Nations. The body was set up to create new ways for nation-states to interact and communicate outside of "power politics" which many saw as being the cause for two World Wars in the space of thirty years.

Optimists and Realists

Frederick Eggleston lectured future diplomats for the Department of External Affairs and categorized his students into two camps; Optimists and Realists. Eggleston called the Optimists those that were liberal internationalists. They saw peace as the normal state of international affairs and war as the anomaly. Consequently they sought meta-national structures which promoted the communication between potential conflicting nations, and the dismantling of irrational power bases; such as empires, colonialism, dictatorships, despots, and arms races. In addition they sought universal human rights.

The Realists by comparison were still wedded to the "power politics" that had dominated Western Europe for centuries. In Australia's case this meant following the "Great and Powerful Friends" doctrine of foreign policy, seeking an iron-tight alliance with the great power of the time, the United States. The Realists also saw the Cold War in binary and absolutist terms, there would be no empathising with the Soviet Union. Power was respected for its own means, and if a dictatorship or despot was part of the alliance, then their crimes against liberty were to be over-looked. The Realists also believed that the European powers should return to their colonies and grant them self-government over several generations, rather than immediately.

Both camps looked to an external body of higher coercion to implement their international goals however. The Optimists in the United Nations, and the Realists in the United States. Neither philosophy truly had an independent Australian foreign policy at heart. It is interesting to note that at the end of World War II, Australia had the fourth largest Air Force on the planet after the United States, Russia and Britain. Yet the Realists were prepared to see that instrument of power go, and a reliance on American military power replace it. There is no doubt, despite their efforts, that neither the Optimists, nor the Realists, saw Australia in terms of an independent country.

Defence and Immigration

The Defence Department in the 1940s was extremely conservative. Those that sought an independent Australian military with the short funds that it could muster in the 1930s were ultimately ousted. The great pro-Australian Air-Marshal Richard Williams was removed by Robert Menzies in a political move. Yet it was Williams' foresight to establish an Australian aerospace industry, with the intent of making the RAAF an indigenously sustainable force, that enabled Australia to license build aircraft until the 1980s.

Evatt and his secretary, John Burton, thought the military leaders too wedded to British ways, and "inadequately Australian". Not only were the defence department concerned about the growing influence of the Department of External Affairs, but there now arose the challenge of Australian military doctrine having to fit a foreign policy that wasn't dictated by Britain. Previously the military only had to worry about transparently slotting in to the British military and ensuring suitable numbers of Australian troops were available for a Middle Eastern theatre.

It is with complete irony that ANZUS is used as such a crutch by modern Australian Governments. The ANZUS Treaty was established by John Foster-Dulles with the urging of Britain so that Australia would send troops to the Middle East in any future war. The treaty was written so that the United States would ensure Australian sovereignty in the Pacific in the case of a second front arising, so that Australia would not do what it did in 1941 and attempt to bring them home, or even worse, defy London and Washington and demand they be employed in the defence of Australia. The ANZUS Treaty was so Australia would not do a "Curtin" with the 7th Division again.

In the 1940s Australia suffered from the White Australia Policy with Arthur Calwell enforced as the Minister for Immigration. The Department of External Affairs wanted to establish strong ties with the newly emerging and developing Asian nations in Australia's region, but many actions of Calwell angered the Asian nations, making diplomacy a difficult exercise.

A Loud Voice And A Small Stick

Australia has often been accused of braying loudly but carrying a small stick. Evatt saw the possibility of the United Nations as enabling a middle power such as Australia to have undue influence on the major powers. This is the core of the "Great and Powerful Friends" doctrine. It is predicated on subservience to the current super-power but seeking to advance Australia's national interests, security and economic, within the interests of the super-power. Evatt saw subservience to the UN as offering the possibility to influence multiple powers at once, including the US, UK, France and the Soviet Union. It was as mis-guided as the current bilateral relationship with the US, and doomed to fail. Power politics dominated in the UN as well.

Evatt and Burton both saw secrecy as hampering foreign relations. They were open in their communications with anyone who wanted to communicate, including communist nations. They were also often exceedingly blunt with other nations, and did not use the garrulous forms of diplomatic language to explain themselves. However their approach did mean that the world knew Australia now had a Department of Foreign Affairs that dealt in foreign policy.

Conclusion

At the end of Evatt's term as Minister for External Affairs, the department remained in the maturation stage even though it had achieved prominence in the Executive Cabinet. Despite the categorization of diplomats by Egglestone, the Department's outlook was grey and often pragmatic, dealing as Optimists when they could and Realists when they could not. Evatt is well known for his role in establishing the United Nations, but Australian foreign policy remained trapped by alliance diplomacy, that would lead to the uncritical support of the United States over the next half-century and continue through today.

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The problem of establishing a perfect civil constitution depends upon the problem of law-governed external relations among nations and cannot be solved until the latter is.

Immanuel Kant

That quote is from Immanuel Kant's Idea for a Universal History with Cosmopolitan Purpose: Seventh Principle which Lee brought to my attention.

Kant argues that natural state of nature for mankind, and nations, is a brutal state of freedom. Where individuals and states act in arbitrary and violent means in order to preserve their perfect freedom and autonomy of action.

To Kant a perfect civil constitution is impossible while there are outside pressures on it, as the permanent state of war, or preparation for war is ultimately destabilising as the state bends the individual to the state's will.

Kant concludes;

As long as states will use all their resources for their vain and violent designs for expansion and thus will continually hinder the slow efforts toward the inner shaping of the minds of their citizens, and even withdraw from their citizens all encouragement in this respect, we cannot hope for much because a great exertion by each commonwealth on behalf of the education of their citizens is required for this goal.

Every pretended good that is not grafted upon a morally good frame of mind is nothing more than a pretence and glittering misery. Mankind will probably remain in this condition until, as I have said, it has struggled out of the chaotic condition of the relations among its states.

International liberalism's answer to this conundrum is meta-national institutions for nations to air their grievances. It attempts to replace violence with direct communication. This philosophy grew out of the depravities of World War I and World War II where violence between the nations consumed the whole globe.

Statesmen such as Woodrow Wilson and Australia's Doc Evatt were heavily involved in the forming of meta-national institutions such as the League of Nations and United Nations. Doc Evatt and John Burton often took the principle of brutal and honest communication to extremes, shocking diplomats from other nations in their plain talk.

The other side to international liberalism is power politics. This seeks to replace communication with sheer power in terms of military and economic might backing up diplomatic movements. The two purist players in power politics are the United States and France, the latter following the Gaullist tradition of foreign policy. Unsurprisingly the Americans and French butt heads often.

The neo-conservative movement in the United States has derided the United Nations as irrelevant. Ironically the United Nations itself often served as an institution for factions in its membership to push their interests. Wars were fought for instance in Korea with the United Nations against North Korea and China.

Power politics has left the Middle East in a maelstrom benefiting the control and collapse of power to the central governments of the United States, Iran and Saudi Arabia. While leaving Iraq and Afghanistan without an enforceable civil constitution. They exist in a vacuum of civil stability.

Is there a third way, or are we just left to hope that trade and globalisation will smooth out the wrinkles between nation-states?

Engagement

Paul Keating and Gareth Evans undertook a foreign policy known as Asian Engagement . This was a radical break from past Australian foreign policy doctrine which I don't think has been fully appreciated yet by political commentators.

The Howard and Hawke governments, as well as every government prior until Billy Hughes practised the Great and Powerful Friends doctrine [GAPF] of foreign policy. It was first developed by Billy Hughes at Versailles in 1919 when he used Australia's efforts of supporting Britain in WWI to get a seat at the table.

He was challenged by Woodrow Wilson to explain why Australia, a dominion of the British Empire, should be represented at the table by Hughes and not by Britain's foreign minister, Lloyd George. Hughes replied that he; " represented 60,000 dead. "

Once gaining a seat Hughes did not advance Australian interests, he advanced British interests. Britain was a huge trading market for Australia and he was worried that if Australia was disloyal, then Canada, and in particular its wheat, would get favoured access to British markets.

Hughes was also concerned that Australian security depended on the Royal Navy. So he subsumed Australian military and foreign policy to replicate British interests - uncritically - in order to guarantee British security for Australia and access to British markets.

It was a bit of a furphy. Britain knew it could not protect Australia if there was simultaneous conflicts in Europe and Asia. Australia knew it too. Australian subservience in foreign policy did not get us any improved access to British markets either. Australians found new markets to export into - as entrepreneurs do.

All The Way With LBJ!

That was Harold Holt's cry when he promised increased Australian involvement in Vietnam. It is indicative of the uncritical nature of our relationship with our Great and Powerful Friend which after World War II was the United States, not Britain.

John Curtin is often acknowledged for his courage in defying Winston Churchill and uttering the words in 1941;

Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom.

This is the same policy - just swapping Britain for America. Since then Menzies followed it, though grudgingly with America, seeking to return to Britain's fold through the Commonwealth. Both Fraser and Hawke did; and now Howard, who returned to the policy with an almost violent thud. Menzies and Curtin could not have scripted Howard's doctrine and its perceived benefits more closely.

Howard has added another permutation to this policy, namely the complete absence of power politics. The Howard government is highly uncritical of the United States, even when there has been plenty of room for meaningful criticism. Howard has acted in a similar way with other countries, particularly China.

The Complete Approach

Asian Engagement is predicated on several premises;

• Australia is located in the South Pacific and South-East Asia
• We are a regional military and economic power
• Our main trading partners are regional (our biggest is Japan)
• Regional stability and prosperity will come through the complete political, military, economic, social and cultural engagement of the nations in the region.
• Australian power and influence can be advanced beyond the region through this engagement doctrine.

It is a kind of diplomatic globalisation where the nations enmesh to such a point that violence, warfare and cutting of communication is unthinkable. The radical nature of it is not only in how Australia projects itself, but also the confidence Australia has in being able to project its identity as well as absorb the identities of others into itself.

This policy is an improvement over the Great and Powerful Friends doctrine and in my opinion is superior for countering terrorism than a policy of hard power and the GAPF policy. I have also argued for the defence style of engagement that is inherent in the Engagement doctrine which would both secure our region while simultaneously advancing our interests.

Back To Kant

Neither of these four foreign policy methods solve the problem that Kant proposed that the constant violence and preparing for violence between nations must first be solved before a perfect civil constitution can be constructed. I believe that the Engagement doctrine is the superior one of all the options.

However, I still maintain that a policy of strong defence capability is necessary.

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I normally only read The Economist when I am waiting at the airport. I got to read it front-to-back tonight; United Airlines lost my wife's luggage. There were two articles [behind paywall] on the laziness of trade talks in Doha. I think both articles misjudged neo-conservatism and the national conservatism that is being practiced in world trade now.

Institutions like the World Trade Organisation stem from the foreign policy of international liberalism. This is the philosophy of meta-national consensus through open communication and a forum for all to voice their concerns without the worry of violence or power imbalances.

Neo-conservatism, and its roots in seeking a permanent American hegemony, is based on power politics. One of the concerns of neo-conservatism was the erosion of the nation-state's sovereignty to meta and supra-national entities such as the United Nations, World Trade Organisation and International Court.

Neo-conservatism seeks to remove those influences and re-establish the nation-state as the primary source of power and sovereignty. In trade terms this has seen the rise of the bi-lateral trade agreement.

This enables power imbalances to in trade to manifest themselves in trade agreements between two countries. This is beneficial for the United States as they are such a powerful country. As The Economist notes;

Lawmakers (Congressmen) appear keener on bilateral trade agreements, in which America can dictate terms more easily than on multilateral compromises.

The US-Au FTA is a good example of this. A bilateral trade agreement is easy to get with the US as long as the other nation agrees to US intellectual property laws and agricultural quotas. Rather than free trade, they are managed trade in the more powerful government's interest.

The Howard Government has followed an Australian form of conservative nationalism. Through its policies it has tried to re-establish the authority and sovereignty of the nation-state as much as is possible. The Howard Government has also conducted a couple of neo-conservative nation-building operations independently - East Timor and the Solomons - as well part of a coalition.

As a consequence bilateral agreements are Australian policy, rather than ratifying trade liberalisation through WTO agreements. The Economist warns;

If the Doha talks go nowhere, the future of the multilateral trade system itself will be at risk. The efforts of trade officials are already shifting from the multilateralism that Doha represents to regionalism.

There are now more than 350 bilateral and regional trade talk deals, double the number of a decade ago, and many more are being negotiated.

If the Doha round collapses, regionalism, despite its unarguable economic inferiority, will replace multilateralism as the organising principle of global trade.

The Economist misses by calling it regionalism; its correct name is neo-conservatism in the US and conservative nationalism in Australia.

International liberalism is dead in the water as foreign policy or philosophy. Nation-states no longer support it. The increasing irrelevance of the WTO is a symptom of the change to neo-conservatist foreign and trade policies.

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Indonesia is slowly becoming an active member of the international community in a more international liberalist manner after the expansionist and isolationist years of Sukarno and Suharto. Indonesia has contributed to United Nation deployments in Congo, Cambodia and Senegal amongst others. Yudhoyono earned much of his public profile by commanding Indonesia's forces in Bosnia. A deployment to Lebanon poses many messy political issues for Indonesia but which will probably not deter the new Indonesian internationalist outlook.

Since Indonesia's conversion from autocratic dictatorship to liberal democracy it has viewed itself and its role on the international stage much differently. Sukarno and Suharto were first and foremost expansionists, nabbing East Timor and West Papua. They were also ruthless in how the integrated the military into the civil bureaucracy and maintenance of civil order.

Since Suharto was kicked out, the military's role in civil governance has also been eroded though there has been a recent resurgence in the TNI's political meddling with the West Papua issue and the return of Konfrontasi politics with Australia over the issue.

The establishment of liberal democracy has enabled Indonesia to revisit its view of itself and its role in the international community. For instance an editorial in the Jakarta Post argued for Indonesia to use its role as chair of the D8 to promote moderate Islam, democracy and trade ;

Through the D-8, Indonesia, as the new chair of the grouping, should not only promote trade among member countries, which in itself is a daunting task, but also promote the values of moderate Islam and democracy among other Muslim-majority countries, so that citizens of the world can see Islam in a different light. Only then will this grouping become relevant.

This is a drastic change from the Indonesia of the 1960s and 1970s. It is also a very positive view of Indonesia for Australia.

As the editorial shows, Indonesia sees itself as a positive force amongst Muslim countries in spreading liberal democracy and free trade. It makes rational and consistent sense that the Indonesian government sees itself taking a large role in any peace-keeping deployment to southern Lebanon.

However the politics of public opinion are somewhat messy. There are certainly Muslim groups in Indonesia who take a hard line against Israel and seek to promote Hezbollah and Hamas. I was surprised to see this paragraph in the article, Indonesia should think twice about Peacekeeping in Lebanon ;

It is rightfully consistent in its support for the Palestinian cause. Indonesia refuses to recognize Israel and regards the Jewish state as a flagrant entity with little respect for international institutions and the rights of Palestinians.

Hence by any measure Indonesia is not above the fray, politically or emotionally.

Despite the Indonesian Government's enthusiasm for the deployment, there are detractors in Indonesia, such as, Indonesians urged not to send men but to buy weapons for Hezbollah ;

"There is no need to send men there. I think we should donate more money to help Hezbollah and Hamas fighters buy more weapons," Indonesian Ulemas Council (MUI) chairman Din Syamsuddin told a gathering of religious leaders, according to the Jakarta Post.

"If needed I will personally hand over the weapons to them," he added.

Malaysia is facing similar inconsistencies in its political stance . While it is promising a couple of hundred troops for the deployment it wants other nations to break off relations with Israel.

I believe Indonesia is on the right path with its current policy despite the hard-line detractors such as Syamsuddin who are arguing the opposite. Indonesia is integrating itself into the political community as a productive and positive member, something that needs to be encouraged as the benefits will flow to our region as well.

Indonesia's growing view of itself as a positive force for moderate Islam, democracy and increased trade also bodes well for Indonesia, the South Pacific and our personal relationship with Indonesia.

Great and Powerful Friends doctrine, International liberalism and the Engagement doctrine.

Allan Gyngell and Michael Wesley write in Making Australian Foreign Policy:

Changes in foreign policy direction are rare but important. The most significant postwar changes in the focus of Australian foreign policy came with the election in 1972 of the Whitlam Government, which introduced a more independent and internationalist foreign policy with a clearer focus on Asia, and the 1996 election of the Howard Government, which abandoned the post-Whitlam bipartisan consensus to focus foreign policy more openly on the national interest and link it more directly to the domestic political agenda.

I have argued in the past that there are three doctrines which inform Australia foreign policy. They are the Great and Powerful Friends doctrine [GAPF], International Liberalism and the Engagement doctrine.

The GAPF gets its name from a comment by Robert Menzies but it was initially used by Billy Hughes at Versailles. This is where Australia subordinates its defence and foreign policy to the 'great and powerful friend' in return for security and economic benefits - that is the theory anyway. This means that the Australian foreign policy and defence policies are not in the Australian national interest, but in the 'great and powerful friends' interest. When Curtin made his statement that we 'look to America' in 1942, he was swapping Britain for the US. It has been that way ever since.

The GAPF is pretty much the dominant philosophy, other than short periods during Gareth Evans' and Doc Evatt's time as foreign ministers, it has been the central framework for Australian foreign relations.

International liberalism pops up constantly from back in the days of Immanuel Kant with his cosmopolitan liberalism to Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations, and after World War II a short period where it was hoped establishing a confederacy in the United Nations would provide a non-violent means for nation-states to communicate openly. The Cold War effectively snookered this initiative as foreign relations dropped into a binary state between the West and the Soviets. Doc Evatt took the doctrine very seriously to the point where his bluntness of communication was shocking to diplomats of other countries. International liberalism has been persistent. Even today Prime Ministers and Foreign Ministers have to work inside the UN framework, a good example being East Timor.

The Engagement doctrine is rather new, though aspects of it have existed in the past, such as components of Percy Spender's Columbo Plan and Gough Whitlam's worldview: though Paul Keating and Gareth Evans took it to a new level. The Engagement doctrine is basically the belief that security is not possible unless there is engagement between nations in all areas of national life; from diplomacy, military, economy, society, culture, etc etc. Cultural isolationists tend to find it offensive but Engagement is predicated on Australian strength at all levels - not just governmental or diplomatic.

These three doctrines are never practiced in isolation, nor can the adoption of one exclude the others. As I mentioned every Prime Minister and Foreign Minister has had to deal with the UN, transnational organisations and treaties - so international liberalism still has a place. Same with Engagement, people are so mobile these days that the positive influence of non-governmental character on stability and security cannot be ignored.

Because of the highly different doctrines which Australian governments have used to inform foreign policy there are effects that lead through the Australian system that go beyond foreign affairs itself. For instance the recent debate between GAPF and Engagement proponents brought divergent approaches to military structure and economic policy.

Engagement military policy tends to be what Paul Dibbs calls 'regionalists' where the main focus is projecting into the Air-Sea Gap - the Northwest shelf, Timor Sea and Coral Sea. GAPF policy is 'expeditionist' in comparison and seeks to ensure that Australian military procurement is compatible with the great and powerful friend's military. Additionally the ADF is not necessarily structured to defend the Air-Sea Gap, rather, it is for short and long term expeditions as a minor part of the great and powerful friends forces. To confuse it further, international liberalists tend to prefer expeditionist multi-national force deployment: al-la UN.

Central to the GAPF doctrine is that a subservient foreign policy brings economic benefits. The political narrative over the Au-US Free Trade Agreement [FTA] was an example of this where it was claimed that the Australian support of the Iraq war led to the FTA. In reality bilateral FTAs are the current fashion with the waning power of the international liberalist World Trade Organisation [WTO] and several nations received FTAs with the US despite opposing the Iraq war or giving moral support only: such as Costa Rica, Singapore and Chile.

So which one of the doctrines is best? I consider the Engagement doctrine a disruptive technology that is the best able to seek national advantage under globalisation. I also believe that the GAPF unnecessarily places Australia in disadvantage on the world stage and inherently cannot live up to its promise of economic and security benefits. Most of the GAPFs assumptions and benefits are persistent political myths from the early 20thC.

That said, the reality is all three doctrines have merit at different times: a strong relationship with the US is a prerequisite in this day and age, as is the transnational structures of international liberalism: and the interdependence of globalisation which engagement seeks to exploit. However, in my opinion governments have hidden behind the myths of the GAPF for far too long - we need more Engagement and less GAPF.

One of the claims of the 'Great and powerful friends' doctrine [GAPF] of foreign policy is that it brings economic benefits to the smaller partner from the powerful friend. This stems back to Billy Hughes in 1919 being concerned that if Australia was seen as disloyal to Britain, then Canada would get privileged access to the British wheat markets. Which was a false assumption to base a foreign policy upon. Today the Free Trade Agreement [FTA] is being touted as an example of the GAPF working to Australia's benefit. It is worth reflecting if this is true.

International liberalism got a leg up as policy fashion after World War II with the successful establishment of the United Nations [UN]. Which has proven to be a resilient institution, surviving the Cold War and more recently American Neo-conservative policy. One of the other multi-national institution is the World Trade Organisation [WTO].

Fitting with international liberalism, and similar to the UN, the WTO was intended to be a forum for nations to voice their concerns over being shut out of trade in a non-violent body. Its goals were the increase of global trade and the lowering of protectionist barriers. It also contained arbitration bodies for nations to appeal to should they feel there were being unfairly dealt with in trade.

The WTO has fallen out of favour in international circles for several reasons. Along with the World Bank and IMF, it was unable to handle the issues of the Asian Economic Crisis and Contagion in the late 90s. The oughts saw the rise of Neoconservatism in the United States where international bodies, and the policy of international liberalism, were eschewed. Policy became unilateral and bilateral co-operation outside of the former meta-national structures such as the UN and WTO.

This has led to the international fashion of bilateral trade agreements - commonly called FTAs. The free trade part of an FTA is a misnomer, they are more managed trade agreements than free trade ones as a true FTA would be about three sentences in total.

The United States prefers bilateral agreements as they are a huge nation in terms of economic, military and diplomatic might, and a bilateral negotiations suits the US's manner of power politics. Inevitably, in any bilateral agreement, the US will get the better of it. This is just a fact of power politics and why the United States see it to their benefit to negotiate directly, rather than collectively through the UN or WTO.

So Free Trade Agreements have become the fashion. Has Australia's GAPF relationship with the US earned Australia our FTA? The answer is no. Back in 2002 the big issue in the Australian and American relationship was Iraq. The Howard Government became an avid supporter of, and promoter for, the Iraqi conflict.

By the run-up to the 2004 election, the Au-US FTA had been negotiated to the point that the Howard Government decided to put it through parliament. This was undoubtedly a political decision, done to try and wedge the Liberal party's opponents in parliament on the issue - splitting out the free trade Labor supporters and industrial protectionist advocates. It did not seem to have the desired effect, however, it is worthy to note it was used for domestic political purposes.

One of the political reasons given for Australia achieving a FTA with the United States was our support for the war in Iraq. From that same period the US had also negotiated FTAs with Jordan, Singapore, Chile and Costa Rica. Of these nations only Chile had supported the conflict in Iraq, and they had not sent any assets to the theatre. The other nations opposed the war - yet this was not an inhibition to a FTA with the United States.

If a nation was willing to give in on intellectual property provisions and agricultural quotas then the US would negotiate an FTA to its conclusion. The Au-US FTA contains the American provisions for intellectual property, including a DMCA-like clause, as well as quotas for agricultural trade - thus satisfying US requirements.

So the premise that Australia got a free trade agreement with the United States because of our close relationship with the US and the GAPF is false. Free Trade Agreements are the current fashion amongst nations and more representative of the loss of prestige of the WTO than anything else.

In 1919 when Billy Hughes dreamed up the GAPF foreign policy, something like eighty percent of our exports went to Britain. Today the United States is one of several nations that we trade with heavily. The other include Japan, our biggest trading partner, China and South Korea. Unsurprisingly Australia is pursuing FTAs with these three nations, further falsifying the claim that the Au-US FTA was a result of our foreign policy.

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It took me a while to find it, but I eventually found the non-obvious link to Obama's speech in Berlin. Sometimes a speech is a speech and it should be linked as a 'speech'. The main reason for interest in this is that it outlines Obama's most likely approach to foreign policy.

The first part of the speech discusses the common causes of humanity, seeking freedom over tyranny through the action of both the few and the many. He uses the analogy of Berlin, isolated by communism, as an outpost of liberalism sustained by both local action, and national action - such as the airlift and NATO - to ensure that freedom was maintained.

The second part of the speech contains global issues that are bigger than any one nation to tackle. He uses the analogy of Berlin and humanity's common cause in freedom to thread to shared concerns by individuals, communities and nations at a global level. However he celebrates diversity in that cause:

Yes, there have been differences between America and Europe. No doubt, there will be differences in the future. But the burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together. A change of leadership in Washington will not lift this burden.

In this new century, Americans and Europeans alike will be required to do more - not less. Partnership and cooperation among nations is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity.

That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another.

Obama's approach to foreign policy is international liberalism. It is predicated on the freedom of human action, global markets, and the open communication between individuals, communities and nations. The policies stem from the common causes of humanity and shared interests; rather than real politick of 19thC European power politics or the Cold War detente.

International Liberalism and its strands, such as Wilsonianism carries an element of idealism in it, but so does American politics courtesy of its innovative constitution and the imprint that leaves on the American people and politicians. Obama's conclusion in his speech is consistent with American aspirationalism:

But I also know how much I love America. I know that for more than two centuries, we have strived - at great cost and great sacrifice - to form a more perfect union; to seek, with other nations, a more hopeful world.

Our allegiance has never been to any particular tribe or kingdom - indeed, every language is spoken in our country; every culture has left its imprint on ours; every point of view is expressed in our public squares.

What has always united us - what has always driven our people; what drew my father to America's shores - is a set of ideals that speak to aspirations shared by all people: that we can live free from fear and free from want; that we can speak our minds and assemble with whomever we choose and worship as we please.

Neoconservatism was always too small and myopic for America. Its insular nationalism and fear of international institutions left it isolated. A paradox as America is quite an international and global culture - and despite President Bush's constant rhetoric about freedom in his intervention into Iraq it always stunk of real politick and the Carter doctrine.

Obama's foriegn policy speech is big enough for the American dream of a better world, but implementation counts too. Woodrow Wilson was unable to establish his view of international liberalism either at home or abroad. In the same way the Doc Evatt's efforts at international liberalism fell afoul of the bipolar detente policies of the Cold War.

I have no doubt Barack Obama will be the next US President. The US Republican Party is literally broken as a brand and repugnant democratically through the bad governance of the Bush, Hastert and Delay years. I prefer the policies of international liberalism to the intrusive and nationalistic nature of neo-conservatism. I wish Obama luck in achieving the ideals expressed in his Berlin speech.